You and What Army

JFK MEETS GEORGE ORWELL AT THE LIBRARY

    I recently visited the JFK Presidential Library near Boston and discovered something subtly disturbing. The first thing you see on the tour is a short video presentation in a little theatre. It opens with audio of Kennedy saying these insightful words:

"Too often, we hold fast to the clichés of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought. Mythology distracts us everywhere.  For the great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived, and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic."

    That's more relevant than ever, and I was so struck by it that I went back and recorded the passage on my iPhone.  Then when I got home I looked up the quotation so I could find out when and where he said it, which turns out to be a commencement address at Yale on June 11, 1962.
    The funny thing is, that's not quite what Kennedy said.  What he actually said was:

"For the great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived, and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.  Too often, we hold fast to the clichés of our forebears.  We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations.  We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.  Mythology distracts us everywhere."

    Those are the same sentences, but rearranged, and it eliminates a slight hitch in Kennedy's delivery.  Granted, it doesn't change the meaning or substance of Kennedy's statement, but that little bit of Protools magic strikes me as a little creepy in a 1984 kind of way.  All presidential libraries are exercises in vanity and revisionist history but it really makes me wonder what else they manipulated.  (And let's not even get into the irony of our most mythologized president decrying mythology in a place that exists solely to perpetuate his myth.)
    And what about Bush 43's presidential library? Are they going to edit his 2003 State of the Union speech so it doesn't include the lie about Iraq trying to buy yellow cake uranium?

RUSTIC DESSERT FARE

    The other day, I had a stopover at the Trailways station in Kingston, New York.   Inside, at the counter, behind the glass, was a portly lady and her portly French bulldog.  The dog was clearly a real character, sitting on the desk and regarding the room like a rotund pasha.
    "May I say hello to your assistant?" I asked the lady.
    "Oh, that's not my assistant," she replied.  "That's my boss."
    I offered the little fellow a sniff of my hand and made the usual hello doggie noises.  "It's actually his birthday today," the lady said proudly.
    "Oh, will he get a birthday cake?" I said, trying to be cute.
    "Yes, he will," she said proudly.  "It's chocolate and it's shaped like a huge pile of dog poop!  It's got little bits of wax  paper on it, to make it look realistic, and they also put these little plastic flies on it!  Of course, he can't have any, but it's delicious."
    "I bet it is!" I replied cheerfully.

SXSW: WHEN THE MUSIC'S OVER

    It's amazing how much Austin changes once SXSW is over and the hordes have all gone home.  I stayed in Austin until Monday afternoon and as I was sitting in the lobby of my hotel, waiting for the Super Shuttle van, I felt a deafening quiet.  There was no pervasive low-frequency throb vibrating the air, as if the entire town were trapped inside a bass drum relentlessly beaten by a dozen furious imps all jacked up on Red Bull and meth, just the sun-parched hiss of tires on streets and wind in trees.  There was no smell of sweat and hair products, just the bracing whiff of ammonia as a young cleaning lady mopped the floor with the quiet, mindless diligence of a Roomba.
    There were no gaggles of earnest, enthused twentysomethings attired in various shades of indiewear striding purposefully out of the hotel toward the next buzzy show, just the usual obese southern tourists in their bland pastels, high-tech redneck sunglasses and knee-length shorts, waddling on calves like pallid redwood trunks, or resolutely nondescript middle managers with helpful name-tags stuck to their Jos. A. Bank suits, shuffling off to a regional sales meeting in the conference room.  In fact, the whole town was as still as the turtles taking in the warm Texas sun on a stone in Waller Creek.

RIDIN' THAT TRAIN

    On my recent trip to southern California to write about the extreme metal band Lamb of God, I took the train from San Diego to Anaheim.  I spent a few extra bucks and went business class so I could get some work done.  All the folks ahead of me on line were conservative-looking white people in suits, toting briefcases, and walked right onto the train; for some reason I was the only one who was asked to show my business-class ticket.  Must have been the beard and black leather jacket.  I simmered down quickly, though, thanks to a beautiful ride — at points, we were just a few yards from the Pacific Ocean. Here are a few shots I took out the window with an iPhone.

THE FINAL INDIGNITY?

    As we all know, we're constantly bombarded by advertising.  Now they're even putting ads on the outside of New York City subway trains.  But what I encountered upon folding down my tray table on a recent plane flight was just a step too far.  Can air travel get any more wretched?

GRATUITOUS PHOTO OF THE EIFFEL TOWER, TAKEN WITH MY iPHONE

THE FRENCH, THEY ARE A FUNNY RACE

    Only in France would they have a pink soldier.

MMMM... AIRLINE FOOD!

    By now, it's a clichéd cliché to make fun of airline food, and yet I can’t resist.  I've gotten so used to airlines not serving meals that I packed my own dinner for the flight to São Paulo.  And that was an excellent move -- American Airlines does serve a meal on the flight, but only in the broadest sense of the word "meal."  The choices were beef lasagna or chicken with mashed potatoes, which really runs the gamut from A to B.
    These were accompanied by a small white plastic tub containing a few wilted sheets of lettuce still clinging to stalks as thick as redwoods, topped by two slices of tomato that, in texture, color and flavor, resembled cross-sections of a Nerf ball.  All this was topped by a snowy dusting of an unknown tasteless white powder.  If you were so inclined, you could enliven this travesty of nature with something called "Naturally Fresh Olive Oil and Vinegar Dressing," to which they added the helpful advice, "Pour It On ®."  Yes, that's right, they have registered a trademark for the phrase "pour it on."  (To their credit, the salad dressing miraculously did not contain preservatives, hence "naturally fresh."  However, it did contain more soybean oil than olive oil.)  The rubbery bread was augmented by a concoction called "Land O Lakes Buttery Taste Spread," which of course has no butter in it.  It was nasty.
    But all this was nothing compared to the "cheese ravioli" on the way back, a revolting, glutinous mass that would have given any self-respecting Italian a heavy dose of air rage.  I rue the inevitable day when they prohibit passengers from bringing their own food, or worse yet, charge them by the pound

OH, SÃO PAULO, SO MUCH TO ANSWER FOR

    Got back yesterday from São Paulo, where I spoke on a panel at the Orloff 5 music festival.
    The first day I arrived in São Paulo, the organizers of the festival took me to the observation deck of a tall (well, probably 40 stories – there are no big-time skyscrapers in São Paulo) building downtown called Edificio Italia.  I figured I'm the jaded New Yorker and wouldn't be too impressed by the view.  And when we got to the top, I took one look and the word "Wow!" escaped my lips before I could even think about it.  In a complete 360-degree panorama, the landscape is dense with high-rises literally as far as the eye can see.  It is stunning.  This photo I took is just one tiny slice of the view.
    It's a freakishly high-density city and traffic is terrible.  One night we took an hour and a half to go three miles through town -- pull ahead eight feet, stop for a minute; pull ahead eight feet, stop for a minute.  Over and over again.  It was interesting, though -- people would cut each other off or be late off the mark at a light and no one seemed to care.  Not one car honked.  Paulistas have learned to be patient people.
    But you won't see any rich people in those epic traffic jams.  In São Paulo the rich don't even take limousines.  They take helicopters.  That's because they're afraid that if they get stuck in traffic, they'll be kidnapped.  So choppers constantly criss-cross the sky like noisy dragonflies.  Poor people ride on small motorcycles, riding between lanes and madly weaving between cars with suicidal grace, much as the helicopters of the rich weave amongst the high-rises.  They ride motorcycles because, even in a city of nearly 600 square miles, the subway is seriously lacking.  Everyone else drives.
    To combat the crippling traffic congestion, the government instituted a plan where people couldn't drive their car one day a week.  So, to get around the law, people just bought a second car.  And so there are six million cars in the city, with 8,000 more added every week.
    There is a tremendous gap between rich and poor, and it's not just motorcycles vs. helicopters.  The poorest of the poor live in favelas — rambling, dusty slums teeming with ramshackle structures made of rust-colored cinderblock or just scavenged shards of wood.  Anyone above middle class lives in gleaming new high-rises, all behind tall wrought-iron fences, with pillboxes in front, the faces of security guards shining in the blue light of closed-circuit TV screens behind the frosted black glass.
    São Paulo is doing better thanks to the discovery of oil deposits in Brazil.  But even in the downtown business district, there are boarded-up windows and grimy little kids begging at stop lights, and a strange local form of graffitti called pichação covers not just walls but entire sides of buildings.
    It's modern primitive here -- modern enough, for instance, for everyone to have cars and pollute the air and water on a grand scale, but primitive enough that they don't have the funds, diligence or will to clean it up, much less build a comprehensive mass transit system.  (They do, however, use alcohol-based fuel.) No wonder that a horrible brown haze, visible within 200 yards, constantly enveloped the city.  The mind-boggling thing is, there are São Paulos all over the planet: ever-spreading behemoths like Beijing, Cairo, Mexico City, Calcutta, Jakarta, Los Angeles, Karachi, Manila, and on and on.  I have seen the future, and it is São Paulo.

CIAO, MONACO

          I recently went to the Principality of Monaco to present About a Son at the Monaco Music Film Festival.
          Just two square miles in area and nestled on a steep slope created by the Alps sliding into the blue, blue Mediterranean, Monaco is kind of like a cross between Beverly Hills and Miami Beach plunked down into the Cote d'Azur, with palm trees, pastel buildings and the pervasive cleanliness that comes with astonishing prosperity. There were plenty of old Mediterranean-style villas everywhere, but they're slowly disappearing, replaced one-by-one by tall, characterless apartment buildings. There are construction cranes everywhere you look. It's sad, there doesn't seem to be anyone looking out for the old architecture. Pretty soon the place will have no character whatsoever.

          The Grand Prix de Monaco would happen the following week, and large stretches of the town were lined with grandstands full of blue seats, the streets lined with tightly lashed-together stacks of tires. It's hard to imagine cars whipping through these narrow, curving streets at almost any speed; it must be a thrill to watch.
          There were ultra-luxury cars everywhere: Bentleys, Maseratis, Rolls Royces, Ferraris… I even saw a Maybach, a car that costs a half a million dollars. I saw an ultra-rare DeLorean too, which was actually kind of a thrill. In Monaco, a Mercedes-Benz is like a Hyundai. The marinas were filled with absolutely massive yachts, gleaming white like capped teeth. There were virtually no stores that didn't sell high-end clothing, watches, perfume or jewelry, and the restaurants were uniformly exorbitant; the breakfast buffet at my hotel, the fancy-schmancy Hermitage, was 35 euros, or over $40.
          On my first, jet-lagged day there I did a little exploring and went for a walk uphill. Interestingly, that's where the poor people live, maybe because the streets are so steep that rich people avoid them. There were little grocery stores and other shops for people of normal means, kids playing in the street, laundry hanging from lines – you know, normal life. It was pleasant and old and peaceful up there. I went back that evening and had a nice, relatively affordable meal – fish Provençale, washed down with a nice local rosé. People smoked like chimneys throughout their meals, though, and that sucked.
          This was the first annual Monaco Music Film Festival, and they were just getting their act together. I did get the cinematic version of a soundcheck, but the projectionist did not know English and the person doing the translation couldn't stick around. So I did the best I could with my ultra-minimal grasp of French, completely pulling words out of my derriere. "Les couleurs, le saturation, c'est tres important." "Le son…" and then I would point my finger in the air in an upward motion. "Le blanc c'est trop chaud." "L'image… plus grande?" And it worked!

          The screening was on Thursday, so I had the next few days completely free. I went to the Princess Grace Rose Garden, the Japanese Garden, the Jardin Exotique (a beautifully landscaped hillside grove of hundreds of differents kinds of cacti and succulents, many of which were in bloom) which also included a tour of a cave, and the aquarium, which I later learned is situated directly above Monaco's prison, which I assume is filled with welching gamblers, still in their tuxes and bowties. The weather was glorious throughout, but then knowing Monaco someone probably paid good money for that weather.

          One night there was a gala cocktail reception for the filmmakers in the glorious lobby of the Casino de Monte Carlo. Wow, what a gorgeous place, just sumptuous, with high ceilings and ornate moldings and gilding everywhere. (The accompanying crappy photo barely does it justice.) There, I met Prince Albert II, who is a very nice fellow. Turns out he was a summer camp counselor in Moultonborough, New Hampshire, which is very close to where my dad has had a cabin for many years, so we talked about that for a bit and I mentioned how much I enjoyed Rear Window and that I saw a resemblance in him to his mother, which made his face brighten quite a bit. He was interested in seeing the movie, too, and I'll see he gets a copy. The next day he arrived at a screening all by himself, pulling up in an anonymous Toyota. I can report that Prince Albert II of Monaco is an excellent parker.

          Naturally, the filmmakers all bonded, if only because we couldn't really relate to anyone else at the festival, or in Monaco. I had some really nice times with UC Berkeley journalism professor Jon Else, a really cool guy who screened the very striking documentary Wonders Are Many: The Making of Doctor Atomic about John Adams and Peter Sellars' opera about the genesis of the hydrogen bomb, and Cecilia Peck and Barbara Kopple (in the photo with me), who did Shut Up and Sing, the documentary about the Dixie Chicks. They are all nice folks, not to mention super-sharp and talented, and I'm glad and honored to have made their acquaintance.
          The final evening was the gala dinner at the exquisite dining room of the Hermitage Hotel. John Barry, who was being honored at the festival, had fallen ill and couldn't come to Monaco. Earlier, I had noticed a handsome woman of a certain age during cocktails on the terrace overlooking the marina. Turns out it was Claudine Auger, a former Miss France who played a Bond girl in Thunderball (1965), and she accepted an award for Barry with a droll bilingual speech. She's quite a character, kind of like Diane Keaton but, you know, European. Celeste Holm (All About Eve, Gentlemen's Agreement) was also there, accompanied by her vastly younger husband, an outgoing, large-featured guy who I would bet the house sings in musicals, or tried to. (OK, I just looked him up and he's 46 years younger -- and an opera singer! Can I call 'em or what?) It was all extremely high-class, with a belly dancer providing pre-dinner entertainment, and a Provençal Gypsy Kings-ish band playing afterwards.
          I got up at 4:30 in the morning, got a car to the airport at Nice, and was back in my apartment in New York by 2:00 PM. I missed my cat, Mr. Peabody, and he missed me.